The line that pulled me out

Drawing saved me from depression.

There was a time when I criticised myself for everything: my mistakes in business, my personal failures. I saw no meaning in my life. It hurt. It was total.
And at some point I simply picked up a marker and a sheet of paper. Lines, hatching, waves, one after another. I'm not exaggerating when I say I drew five to eight hours a day for a month.

I went into the process with one feeling and came out with another: free. Free from self-criticism, from the demands I made of myself, from obligations. As if every line helped me live through something dark. Little by little my hand grew surer, the lines finer, and my dear girls more graceful.

I'll be honest with you: my first nudes made me feel shame and curiosity at once. What will people think? What would Uncle Freud say?
In the end I stopped caring what anyone thought. Something else mattered: I had come back to life, felt like myself again and wanted to create again.
Since then I've been drawing the female body and looking for femininity and sexuality in it.

Later, by the way, I learned that this technique has a name: zen art, intuitive drawing. While the hand follows the line, the head goes quiet. That is how I made my way back to the light, through line and form.

I'll be glad if these works make you feel something. Tenderness, embarrassment, desire, irritation: any of it will do.